The things they knew
by eireschilde77
Summary: John Conner loved Spongebob Squarepants - A character analysis of our favourite future warrier


No-one really John Conner

No-one really John Conner. To his enemies and soldiers alike he was an enigma.

Sprang forth from the loins of the great mother of the future herself 'Sarah Conner'.

Strong, tough, hard, cold. These were the things people knew about John Conner. Which was nothing. No-one really knew the man behind the mask.

But there had been a few people who had known him.

John Conner was a Monopoly king.

He had started playing the game when his mum took up with Charlie. Before that time board games had been as alien as picnics and baseball games (which he had always sucked at).

Charlie had a thing for monopoly. He even had four limited edition boards, including a Star Wars edition.

As geeky as John was, he still loved the original. He always got to be the car. He had found he was good at monopoly. Strategic thinking could be applied to anything. Whilst not requiring the mental agility of Chess, it was still a game that made you think, only in a fun way.

John had loved Thursday monopoly nights. Loved Charlie's smiles and his mother sulks as they played together as a family.

When his mother had finally been taken from him. Cancer claiming what Skynet couldn't. John had found a small tarnished monopoly car in amongst her things. A reminder of a time where they had been happy. When they had been a family. Sarah had known that John loved monopoly and that he was always the car.

John Conner hated heat.

When he was 6 years old, his mom had taken him on a trip to Central America. They had spent four months in a country so hot that he sometimes felt his skin was melting in the way the skin melted from the robots mum talked about all the time. From that time on, John hated hot weather. Hated the blistering heat on his skin, hated feeling clammy, sweaty, heat reminded him too much of a place he had hated. When he felt the heat emanating from the bombs dropping on Judgement Day he wondered if maybe in the dark corners of his mind if a part of him had known that it would feel like this.

The world he lived in now was never hot. Nuclear winter had ensured that. The lack of heat was the only thing in this world he liked.

He had mentioned all this to Derek once, over ice cream. The day he had first seen his father. It became their ritual, whenever John was stressed, he and Derek would grab an ice cream in the shade. As a joke Derek had once bought him 5 bags of the ice packs you get in first aid kits. Portable coolness in a box he said.

Derek had known how much he hated he heat. But Derek Reese (his Derek) had died years ago. Getting in the way of a bullet meant for Sarah. The Derek of this time knew nothing of John Conner but what he let him see. Which was very little.

John Conner loved Spongebob squarepants.

He knew it was a dorky cartoon, but he had loved it since he was 11. He loved the annoying theme tune. The city of bikini bottom, the sheer escapism one could find watching an animated sponge and starfish get into trouble.

When Cameron had joined their little band of merry men, she had found him watching it one day and had asked him to explain it. Which he had tried to do but it had just confused her. But from that day on she had sat and watched it with him. Her mind trying to grasp the concepts behind a humour she could never understand.

Cameron knew that he loved spongebob, she had referred to this once or twice before, on times when she mentioned that he didn't laugh anymore.

Cameron knew him, probably better than anyone now. She could read his bodies temperature and tell when he was upset. She had watched him fight to save Derek both times he was shot. She had seen him cry the day his mother died. She knew his favourite colour was Green and his favourite ice cream flavour was actually Vanilla. She knew he kept a mental list of names of every man, woman and child who had ever died under his command.

She knew he liked spongebob-flipping-square pants.

She had been his constant for the last 20 years and was the only one left who knew John Conner at all.

Or she had been. The machine standing in front of him now, knew very little about him other than the mission directives he had given her.

Her eyes were blank and cold. His Cameron had a light in her eyes that no-one else knew to look for but him. A softness in her smile that no-one else recognised.

This machine now had all that to learn again.

John loaded Cameron into the machine and gave the orders to his men on what to do. He knew he couldn't watch her leave.

Another soldier came in and told John of a mission gone wrong. Four soldiers dead, he read out their names and ranks as was custom. No-one knew who had started the custom but a fallen soldiers name was always spoken out loud, to give some respect to their memory.

Kyle had known. John had begun the custom back at sentry. When Kyle had asked him why he had explained that speaking their names made them real, reminded people that they had lived, breathed, fought and died. It allowed the brain to store their names into the memories of those who should honour and respect them.

John stored these names silently and quickly with the long list of others who had been long lost in this never ending war and nodded curtly to his soldiers before walking away.

John recognised a part of his brain screaming his dissent at the loss of Cam, the last good thing in his life at the same time as he heard the soldier quietly remark.

"God he's a cold bastard"

John closed the door on his past and went back to war.

No-one really knew John Conner at all.

Finite

Ok, for the basis of this story, I'm going with one of my own theories which is that Cameron is basically in a timeloop i.e. John reprogrammes her model, wipes her memory, sends her back in time, where she eventually meets younger john, stays with him, survives judgement day and fights alongside him. Im using the preposition that Derek never singled her as metal before until he met a terminator version of her in the house.

Hope that doesn't sound as confusing as it might. Hey it's terminator, very few places can make your brain hurt just thinking about them the way Terminator does.


End file.
